


Left of a Man

by BitchtearsandButtsecks (HandbagMurder)



Series: Homestuck [27]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asexual Character, Coming of Age, Fluff, Friendship/Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandbagMurder/pseuds/BitchtearsandButtsecks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave has more pressing interests than girls. Throughout his teenaged years he learns to navigate the seas of puberty, friendship, jealousy, and a subtle sort of intimacy that eludes any sort of name.</p><p>marslikesfluff.doc</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left of a Man

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like one weekend in april and saved it to my external hard drive and took several months to edit it lol

_In the early days of the last century, it was customary for a woman to walk on the left side of a man, away from the street. This was supposed to protect her from cars splashing puddles in the gutter as they passed, or other dangers that could be fended off by drawing a sword with his right hand._

 

◊

 

The first instance you ever feel a little out of place is when you open your locker in fourth grade and discover that someone, at some stage, has slipped a card in a pink envelope inside; a gesture you had not been anticipating, despite the holiday atmosphere.

Valentines Day implies tissue paper hearts strung in cheerful pink flounces along the tops of all the walls, and the girls from the middle school downstairs scurrying around the cafeteria with roses clutched in their hot little hands. Their manner of excitable chatter and girlish giggling was more irritating than usual today, and while usually you would have just made fun of them with John you couldn’t help but be a little unnerved by how discretely ‘into’ this whole thing everyone else seemed to be. The teachers in pink… the pre-pubescent boys who seemed to be flitting around more awkwardly than usual… and John who had shown up to school with exactly twenty seven cards in his bag; one for every individual in the class.

“Valentines Day is stupid,” you told him when he gave you yours, in an unassuming white envelope, and he had just laughed in that way he does and moved on to pass one out to the next desk. All the same, you felt kind of happy when you opened it and saw that he had actually written you a personalised message in his nerdy round handwriting.

_Dear Dave. I hope you have a really cool valentines day! From your friend John._

It was simple, but you had appreciated it under your stone cold façade. You don’t particularly appreciate the _second_ card you receive; it is just as modest but somehow ten times more unnerving for the mystery of who sent it, and swallowing you freeze up where you stand and stare at it dumbly, where it had fallen onto the ground by your foot. You don’t know this person because your only friend is John and he had already given you his, so this means that whoever put _that_ in there was a stranger and you really don’t like that idea.

You are old enough to understand the concept behind giving Valentines Day cards as ‘not friends’, and though you understood it in theory you had always just let it sit there on the sidelines, unapplicable to you for every day of your life so far.

“Dave, hurry up!” John is impatient as usual; you said you would go with him to hockey practice today, and he has already gone to his locker to get his stick and kit, so rather than keep him waiting you swallow your uneasiness and bend down hurriedly to pick it up. There is a small heart on the seal where the flap tucks in, and with swift fingers you nip it into your mathbook and clear your throat.

“Right, right. Don’t get your knickers in a knot Egbert the turf isn’t going anywhere.”

John sighs, and you can predict that he rolls his eyes even though back is to him, your arm scooping your damp swimsuit bag and towel out of your locker. Your class had swimming today in gym; the only sport you are even remotely good at.

“And neither are we and that’s a problem. Come _on_.”

“Okay okay!” you slam your locker shut, suddenly in a testy mood. “Fine, lets go then!”

John looks at you, obviously wondering what got you in such a poorly state so promptly. You glower at him from behind your shades, forcing yourself not to think of the envelope in your mathbook.

You open the card when John is practicing, and you are alone on a flimsy wooden stand watching his bag and trying to do some of your homework. It’s no easy feat concentrating when weird thoughts are hanging over your head like that, and in an attempt to prove to yourself that you are being stupid you pull out the envelope and tear it open.

The card inside is pink too, and decorated with a glittery silver heart. You find it distinctly surreal, when you open it and there is a girls handwriting in there.

 _To Dave,_ it says, and her writing is very different from John’s. _Happy Valentines Day. I like you a lot from your secret admirer._

You exhale, not having realised you were holding your breath, and lift your eyes from the card to let them search thoughtlessly for John; your mind is a million miles away, but you watch him dart across the field and shoot for a goal while his team cheers him on. His shin guards are metallic blue, and they reflect the sunlight brightly.

You are ten years old, and you think that you might have been mistaken when you told your bro last night that no one really cares about Valentines Day, or giving out these stupid, pink hued greetings.

 

◊

 

You go to John’s middle school because he’s your best and only friend, and your bro doesn’t mind paying for a buscard so that you can get there. It’s a bother that it is more than a ten minute walk away, but he tells you that you are old enough now to be trusted, but don’t get caught trying to look up girls skirts or pinch boys butts. You pull a stupid face and he ruffles your hair affectionately.

“See you later little heartbreaker.”

That’s what he calls you as you walk out the door, and it’s what he’s been calling you for the last year or so with just the right degree of affection for you not to be uncomfortable, so much as grimly fond of the title. You did earn it after all; Four girls asking you out since your eleventh birthday, plus a whole slew of slighted flirtations… he sat you down one evening and asked you if you were gay but you had been too embarrassed to listen. You might be gay, you don’t know. You kind of hope you are because girls make you really uncomfortable what with all that giggling and secret-secret chatter, but you think that thirteen is a little bit too young for you to know that kind of thing for sure.

You hitch your bag up on your shoulder and wander down the road to the bus stop to catch your ride. The morning is sunny and the day promises to be scorching. In your pocket your phone vibrates and you click your tongue, predicting it would be John before you even flipped it open.

_Hey Dave! You ready to make this happen?_

Well, you are about as ready as you are ever going to be.

 

◊

 

You and John both take Health class, and this makes the numbers of girls and boys uneven. You end up electing to be the ‘alternative’ family when the time to adopt a flour baby comes around; a role which earns you a certain degree of prestige among the year group, and the happy position as butt of a few jokes, but you kind of like it. It’s fun taking flour baby Casey to classes, and even trying to change diapers becomes grandly hilarious when John is being silly about it. As much as you feel it’s uncool to laugh at John putting a diaper on his head in a slapstick and entirely un-ironic joke, you can’t help but snort and send a tuft of baby powder his way. His laughter turns into a sneeze snort giggle and before you know it you are both in stitches. The teacher has to send you both promptly out of the class.

Afterwards, a girl approaches you in the hall. You are getting your books out of your locker at the time, and John (Casey under his arm) has run ahead to grab your seats for lunch so you don’t have anyone there to back you up. She seems nervous, but you try to be easy going and not put the pressure on for her to spit it out.

“Um, Dave,” she says, tucking a long thread of blonde hair behind her ear. Her green eyes flicker to and away from your face nervously. “I was wondering if maybe, you might want to swap partners and be with me instead? My partner said he doesn’t mind being with John, if it’s okay with you.”

You frown before you can help yourself, and there is a moment in which you don’t know what to say. The girl clears her throat and shuffles around, and you notice she is wearing a pink singlet top. Her breasts are starting to stretch the cotton around the area of her chest, and you can see the beginnings of cleavage peeking from her neckline. You don’t find it unlovely, but you think her face would be easier to talk to if she would only turn it to you. You feel weird looking at her boobs and attempting to carry a conversation.

“Uh, no thanks?” you try, still confused as to why she would even make such a request. “Johns my bro I’m not going to ditch him now that would be lame of me.”

“Oh, but… uh, are you sure?” she looks up at you, and she seems so hopeful your heart actually sinks a little in guilt when you shake your head.

“Yeah, I’m sure.

It’s dreadfully awkward, but you don’t know what else to say.

When you sit down at lunch and heave a mighty sigh, John looks at you as if he can sense something is awry. You tell him what happened.

He spends the remainder of the break teasing you for cheating on him with that ‘Scarlett woman’, and you regret even bringing it up.

 

◊

 

You’ve lived here since you moved from Texas at age four but you have never been to the cinema, so one Sunday John offers to take you (and Casey) on a ‘family trip’ to see the only movie on the screening list that your brother hadn’t already illegally downloaded and shown you; a children’s film that you would never admit to kind of wanting to see unironically, although you did make an extravagant deal about wanting to see it ironically because you thought it would be apt. besides, Casey deserved to learn the ways of irony from the best, and that just so happens to be you.

You are really excited to be actually going in here, though you would never let it show on your face. You aren’t so excited that you have to take off your shades, however, and it is only after John’s insistence that it will be dark and no-one will see that you remove them, and turn your attention to Casey to hide the nakedness of your face. He comments on the silly points, and though you can feel his curious gaze linger on your eyes you appreciate the fact that he doesn’t mention them, but rather turns his attention to the screen in all its vastness. He has a massive bucket of popcorn in his lap, and you have a bag of flour. It seems unfair but you don’t mind because he paid for your ticket in here.

“Hey Dave, after this do you want to go get some smoothies?”

“Yeah, sure whatever.”

You like that idea. You like spending time with John, the more the better, and you like smoothies too so that’s a bonus. Maybe afterward you would be able go back to yours and play video games or something.

Yeah, that sounds fun.

The movie starts and your stomach leaps because _wow_ is that ever high definition. It isn’t hard at all for your entire focus to be invested in the storyline, and you just absent mindely start shovelling popcorn into your mouth.

Your hand touches Johns more than once in the bucket. He snatches his hand away promptly every time it happens and shuffles a bit, but you hardly notice.

 

◊

 

For your birthday John gets you some new shades, and you are so excited that you put them on and secretly promise that you will never wear any other pair ever again. You invite him to your house and your brother says you can have a sleepover, so you buy heaps of pizza ingredients and set up your room specially so that you can play some beats later and enjoy your own personal rave cave, before moving through to the lounge and playing video games until the sun comes up and you can both fall asleep on the sofa, completely exhausted.

You are standing in the kitchen when he mentions that you are shorter than him, your hands covered in flour and the thick fresh scent of tomato paste hanging in the air, and at first you scoff but then you realise that he is right; the last month or two has seen John shoot up like a weed and now that you observe it is a little unnerving. The hair on his upper lip is darkening and soon you think his dad will have to teach him to shave. His shoulders are getting wider and his jeans are too short for him; a slice of black sport sock is visible between his leg-cuffs and his shoes.

“… So?” you ask him, dumping a handful of pre-grated cheese (you don’t have the patience to buy the ungrated variety) onto your pizza carelessly and turning to rinse your hands under the tap. You leave floury smudges on the Fawcett and wipe your wet hands on your shirt. “Just you wait and see Egbert soon I will reclaim my rank as tallest and you will keel over in venom spitting envy.”

He laughs and pushes his hair off his face. Its getting quite long but you kind of like him scruffy looking because it makes him seem more puppyish and friendly.

“Oh whatever Dave. Just wait and see soon all the girls will be lining up to ask _me_ out. Finally. How do you like the sound of that?”

You shrug, not really finding it in yourself to care.

 

◊

 

You don’t start puberty until that spring, and unfortunately your great step into adulthood is not marked by an increase in height but by the frustrating appearance of pimples along your hairline, and around the flare of your nose. Your brother buys you some cream from the pharmacy, and it becomes you verses biology for a while, but after about a month you realise despondently that you aren’t going to win. You retire the cream and simply decide to let acne ravage your features for the next indefinite period of time. You should have guessed that would be your luck. Between you and John, he was the one whose luck was turning. His skin was like a baby’s ass and you looked like someone plunged you head first in porridge and pus. Oh well. You figure you can’t look that bad because even though you are short (you should have known this too; your brother had told you so many times you were only going to be a petite kid, because you took after your mother whereas he took after your dad) you still get plenty of attention from the girls.

It doesn’t make you as uncomfortable as it once did, but it does feel sort of strange to sit at a table in the cafeteria surrounded by fourteen and fifteen year olds with fresh boobs and absolutely no interest in looking at them at all. Well, it doesn’t _feel_ strange, per se, but you know in theory that it is and this is definitely the strange part. Maybe there is something wrong with you? John seems to have girls on his mind recently but you just don’t think they are that great. You watch his eyes flicker discretely from the neckline of a classmate to her face and then back down again and can’t help but sigh because you feel a little bit like John is leaving you behind here. Would he be able to explain the appeal then, if you asked him? Your brother had been very obscure when he gave you the talk maybe he had missed some important part of information out. The information that would kickstart your brain into interest mode and have you wondering if you should ask someone to the graduation disco before you head off to high school in the fall.

 

◊

 

You check your face in the mirror almost three times a day now to monitor your acne, but it’s still the same as it ever was and it would seem to have started exploring your back and shoulders now too and that is annoying. Your brother put you on pills a couple of days ago, but they are supposed to take two or three weeks to work so you can’t say just yet whether or not the indigestion they give you is worth it.

After showering you stand in front of the mirror for a long while and examine yourself. You are still short but you are starting to get hair under your arms and a bit of a fuzz on your balls so it can’t be too long before the pubic tuft becomes the pubic jungle, and you can stop worrying about how weird it is to see skin that had been bare for so long interrupted by wiry dark blond curls.

It doesn’t matter how you look at yourself, you feel pretty indifferent to the way you look. Of course, you want to look _good_. You think you do look good. To yourself. You just… it’s just that John spends so much time preening these days in an effort to impress the girls but the only person you can think about looking good for is the guy in the mirror, and he’s a pretty chill dude who doesn’t particularly mind if you have a massive spot on your chin, or if you mope around in ripped jeans and a sweater because he understands. That being said, he would probably prefer to see you in something edgy like skinnies and an ironic hello kitty shirt, so that’s what you do and it feels comfortable and good. You like yourself. You like how you are, how you look, and how you feel.

You just wish that you would hurry up and start to be interested in girls, because then other people can enjoy you too.

 

◊

 

You sleep in John’s bed when you have sleepovers, but he makes you promise not to tell any one because according to him that’s gay, and he doesn’t want anyone to think he might be attracted to other dudes particularly his best friend.

“What’s wrong with gays,” you tell John flatly, watching him from your spot on his bed as he carefully attends to his hair in his mirror. “My bro is a raging homo. I might be gay yet even I dunno.”

“Nothing is wrong with gay people!” John tells you definitively, setting down his brush and shuffling toward the bed. You move over and he pulls off his hoodie, revealing the b-grade movie t-shirt you got him for his birthday two months ago, before crawling in between the sheets. You shimmy in after him, in your boxer shorts and socks already, and he removes his glasses with a sigh. You pass him your shades too, so he can set them on the bedside.

“It’s just, I don’t want people to think I’m gay. This is high school and it’s kind of important to get a girlfriend and stuff. Don’t you want a girlfriend? It’s cool to have a girlfriend, you like being cool.”

He flops backwards and the pillow huffs around his head. You reach behind you and flick off the reading lamp over his bed.

“Yeah, I don’t need to like being cool I _am_ cool.” you pause for a bit, feeling a strange twinge in your stomach that could almost have been guilt. Why should you feel guilty about this? It’s not like you are hurting anyone? Maybe you are misinterpreting it. Maybe you aren’t guilty at all, so much as feeling a little bit slighted and resentful. After all, John is your best friend and it’s not fair that suddenly, girls have become such a big part of his life. “And just fyi Egbert, having a girlfriend doesn’t make you cool. Razor sharp wit and a badass attitude make you cool. You couldn’t be cool if you had twenty girlfriends.”

“Oh shut up.”

“What, it’s true.” You snuggle down, enjoying the way John’s sheets are so crisp and smell like laundry soap; so different from your rumpled ones that smell like they hadn’t been washed for a few weeks. Which they haven’t.  “Why, do you think I’m uncool ‘cause I don’t want a girlfriend? Or boyfriend. Whatever.”

“Yes.”

Haha, you are so fucking hilarious John.”

You like the word ‘fucking’. It’s a new word, your brother said you could start saying it now if you wanted because you were old enough to use it responsibly, and you think that it inspires a distinct sense of awe in John who is still so innocent. A daddy’s boy is there ever was one. You feel really adult using it when the two of you are together. He is silent for a bit (probably admiring your audacity) before he sighs. His eyes are fixed on the silver squares the window casts beautifully on the ceiling.

“Dave?”

“Mm?”

“Do you really not want a girlfriend? Like… you aren’t interested in girls at all?”

“Nope.” You assure him stoutly. Almost assertively, because no one has ever asked you that before and you are excited that someone has noticed and acknowledged something that has lingered at the back of your mind for ages. You want him to say it’s okay. To tell you that’s absolutely fine and you are allowed to feel that way. Because you _are_ , right? “Never have. I don’t even care if I never do.”

John shakes his head just a little and pulls the blankets up over him. Your legs touch under the blankets but unlike the time in the cinema with your hands, he doesn’t jerk them away.

“That’s weird,” he tells you, and you inhale sharply as though he has just punched you in the stomach. “Like, I had girls I liked even when I was in kindergarten. Maybe you _are_ gay…”

You wait in numb surprise, unsure if you should be angry or upset by this turn of conversation. He clicks his tongue and turns his back to you tiredly.

“Whatever. Maybe when we start after the summer you will meet a really pretty girl and change your mind. Goodnight.”

“… Yeah. Night then.”

You want to be angry at him for completely writing off your non-attractions as ‘weird’ but you can’t. If anything the pale feeling of being abandoned only becomes more pronounced and on top of that a fresh concern has arisen:

What if you are strange, after all?

 

◊

 

You meet a girl on your first day at high school who doesn’t make you want to smash your head on a desk. Her name is Rose, and she sits next to you in art class, and she is quite competent you think. Not that you would ever tell her that. She speaks in a posh east coast accent and wears lipstick like a grown lady. She reminds you very much of a cat. You like cats but you are kind of allergic.

She asks to borrow a pencil and you oblige, and when she talks it isn’t about silly air-headed things. She uses big words (a little overwhelming) and she chuckles at your droll commentary on how tedious it is to be drawing vases when you are already a top notch artist already, thank you very much.

She asks if you consider yourself to be the next Da Vinci, and informs you dryly that you obviously have some kind of napoleon complex when you tell her you are. You are taken aback by her forwardness, usually a reference to your height would be an offense, but somehow it isn’t unsavoury when she says it in that easily sardonic tone. You sort of… respect it, actually.

You think that you and Rose are going to be good friends.

 

◊

 

John meets a girl called Jade in gym, which makes you feel a little left out because now you have competition for claim on your gym partner. You do like Jade though, too. She isn’t like other girls, she really likes games and has a lot of energy, but she’s a bit forgetful and sometimes you winder if maybe she likes you, and you have to shove the question to the back of your mind because the last thing you want is for this to get complicated.

You, Rose, Jade and John have a good little group now. You eat lunch together, and laugh together, and you talk about lots of different things but none of them are ever relationships, which is good. You are doing well in school and your bro is really proud of you; he takes you to a gig of his one Saturday, and you invite the other three along. 

You have to wear special tags and you aren’t allowed to drink (of course) but you have a great time. The music is blaring, the lights spinning and flashing in their awe inspiring way, and the manner in which the bodies thrash on the dance floor inspire Jade to leap out of her seat and drag a reluctant Rose out of the booth you had settled at (with a large plate of cheese and ham wedges between you all) to dance. She tries to convince you too, but you decline. You are too cool for dancing.

Too cool like a fox.

And that’s when John leans over and asks you, his voice low and his breath against your air warm as he murmurs under the bassline

 _You should ask jade out sometime dude. I think she is totally into you_.

And all your security and happiness is suddenly undermined.

 

◊

 

When the time comes for you to attend sex ed classes in your second year of High school, you know that something about you is definitely wrong.

Well, not _wrong_. You don’t feel wrong. But you know you are different because no matter what you do, no matter what you try, you can’t find it in yourself to look at a single part of a single human being you have ever met and go ‘I would like to hold hands with that’ and in some ways, that makes you a little bit angry inside.

It’s not a normal sort of anger, so much as a slow baking frustration that leaks slowly through every part of you evenly, and when you find yourself sitting at a table between Rose and John with a condom and a banana on a stand (wow, you had always thought these props were ‘only in the movies’ deals) you make a formal decision to talk to someone about this. You simply cannot go on pretending like you would ever maybe want to have sex with anyone.

It hadn’t happened yet, and it was never going to. You couldn’t kid yourself any more.

You get the condom on easy, unlike John who ripped his twice, and while you found it funny (haha Egbert, teen father extraordinaire) you cant say you are comfortable or happy watching him so interested in an activity you feel is completely pointless. Jade has her condom on her banana and is sitting with Rose, giggling away, and Rose hasn’t even opened hers, but that was just typical rose in every way.

You are pretty sure she’s a lesbian anyway. You’ve seen her walking to school with a senior from the all girls school down the street and the way she looks at that chick with wide starstuck eyes you would bet your right hand on her being besotted. It’s a bit of a jab in the gut to have Rose finally submitting to the hormone tyrants too.

You listen to your teacher talk to you about STIs and safe sex, and a Q&A ensues, but the whole time you sit there instead, staring uncomprehendingly at the man behind the desk, a little insulted that no one has even seemed to consider what it might mean to not like or want to have sex with anyone. Really, you feel very above all of this. You just want to leave already and get some lunch.

You end up eating your pack lunch (dorito sandwich) under the desk while your mates sit around asking questions and making notes.

You would never admit it, but really you are sulking. Just a little bit.

 

◊

 

“I don’t understand!” you rant to Rose, sitting beside her on the bus swaddled in winter clothing, the world outside painted crystalline by the first snowfall of the season. “What’s the big deal? It’s just touching genitals I don’t _have_ to want to do it.”

Rose sighs, and looks weary. You are with her today because you are shitty at John (he had mentioned your disinterest in romance to her and now she had taken to questioning you like some kind of psycho-psychologist) and Jade was busy on some trip with her grandfather, so who else could you have possibly dragged into town to help you choose and apt gift for your brothers birthday?

No one, that’s who.

Rose sits straight and secures the top button of her flashy black coat, her carefully lined eyes fluttering as she composes her thoughts for whatever comes next.

“Usually I would try and dissect this kind of behaviour. Analyze it, and attempt to isolate a cause and reason, but you know I have approached it from every direction and I simply cannot process what might be motivating this state of mind. I want to suggest that you go to the school counsellor.”

You are aghast.

“I what?”

“Please Dave, I want you to be happy. Having a girlfriend or boyfriend is a really fulfilling experience, and I want you to be able to enjoy it too.”

Oh yeah. Ever since Rose started dating that other girl she’s been acting so… ugh. Like she’s too good for you guys? Like she’s suddenly all wise, a romantic expert on top of an expert in every other thing else. Or so she would have you believe.

You give her a look that expresses exactly what you think of that and she sighs again, playing the woeful mother hen so fucking perfectly you could shove her off the bus seat onto the floor. You don’t want to go to a shrink or a counsellor. There’s nothing wrong with your head you just don’t want a girlfriend and why can’t there just be _one person,_ one person in all the world, who can hear you say that, listen for a moment, and then say ‘oh, okay. Well that’s your business then I guess.’

Fuck. Fuck this shitty situation and fuck John for getting Rose involved. You had _trusted_ him and concern wasn’t going to be an excuse. You don’t care how worried he was that his best bro would be the forty year old virgin, he shouldn’t have said a single fucking thing especially about something that you hadn’t talked about or even mentioned to him or so long.

For so long in fact, that you had thought it had become only existent a thought in the back of your head, seemingly unnoticed by those around you. And that had been the way you liked it! Until you made a conscious decision on who to talk to it about that is. Why can’t people just leave you and your choices alone?

You and John would be having a very stern chat about this, when you felt like talking to him again.

 

◊

 

John wasn’t very apologetic at first, thinking you were joking when you expressed your rage and then suddenly taking it back when you punched a decent dent in his wall next to his head. You probably exaggerated your anger a bit there but it had been fun to watch him squirm a bit as you glowered, and told him to keep his stupid nose out next time for fucks sake.

And then he tells you he was worried because you had just seemed so despondent the more he and Rose and Jade got interested in dating. That he missed talking with you all the time, and that he wants to be able to talk about girls and sex and messing around, and you realise that you can’t say no to John like you can to Rose because those baby blues make your stomach do odd wobbly things and the thought of disappointing him is enough to make you want to crawl into a hole and wither away.

You agree to go to counselling if he comes with you, and he breathes a sigh of relief, his hand coming to rest on your shoulder and making you shy away, because you are tender now. You feel vulnerable and betrayed not just by yourself but your best friend too.

He tells you that he’s glad, because your shoulders are starting to fill out now and your acne has faded into insignificance. He wants to wingman for you when you finally graduate to college, and with your heart heavy in your chest you tell him you can, even though this feels like a really despicable lie.

You don’t _want_ to change. Why can’t he see that?

Why can’t he just accept that this is what you are?

 

◊

 

The counsellor asks you about your parents, and your bro, and all amounts of embarrassing questions before announcing quite simply that she was perplexed, and there was no mental reason why you shouldn’t feel attraction to anyone, and therefore your problem must be hormonal, and she sends you to a doctor.

This also is horribly embarrassing.

He asks you things like whether or not you masturbate, whether or not you have wet dreams, and then insists on checking your manly regions for any abnormalities that might have stunted hormone production.

He finds none, so they send you for bloods and you have to get John to come with you for this to hold your hand. You hate needles.

He watches with grim fascination as they tie the tourniquet around your arm and insert the needle, and your fingers tighten to white knuckled ridges in his as you feel your blood being drawn your head a bit light and your arm stinging a little where it pricks you coldly. Chilled sweat beads on your brow, and John squeezes back in reassurance, and you think firmly that he might be an inconsiderate asshole sometimes, and he might not get you, and there were moments you just wanted to kick him in the dick but god help you if there was one person in the world you were glad to have holding your hand right now and giving you gentle words of reassurance, it was John Egbert.

Even if afterwards he makes you jokingly promise not to tell anyone that he let you hold his hand.

 

◊

 

John asks a girl out two weeks later, and the shock hits you like a truck; you stand there in the middle of the hallway stunned when he tells you that he finally has a date that Friday and he is hoping to maybe get a kiss out of it; his first one, he informs you excitedly. Her name is Vriska and she’s in his biology class.

You feel like a four year old in that moment. Childish, unimportant, and small. Like an idiot.

You congratulate him stiffly and depart, your head still spinning and your feet awkward and cumbersome at the end of too-long legs. You don’t want anyone else receiving Johns attention. He’s _yours_.

But it looks a lot like you are going to have to get used to having a little bit less John time these days.

 

◊

 

“I just… never really thought it would happen.” You tell him, licking a stripe up the side of your off season ice cream. “I mean, you always talked about it but I can’t believe it actually arrived. In a carriage. With horses and the livery and everything god John, you would put Romeo to shame with your efforts.”

He’s telling you about his countless attempts at wooing his girlfriend, and by this point you have accepted it enough to pretend you don’t secretly hate her guts.

“John Egbert has a steady girlfriend huh?”

He beams at you, and you pass him your ice cream with a sigh so he can finish it, before lifting your camera out of your lap and bringing up all the photos on review.

This is your seventeenth birthday. It’s not that grand, really. Just you and John chilling on your sofa, playing with the new DSLR bro got you and eating ice creams even though its brass monkey cold out there. You had invited Jade and Rose too but Rose was with her girlfriend and Jade had some guitar recital or something, so it is just the two of you and honestly you think it’s a bit awkward. But John is too happy to talk about Vriska to notice.¨

“Yeah I do. Ahhh she’s so great Dave you know? Don’t you think she’s great?”

“Yeah,” you lie, and you feel a bit of your soul wither up and blacken just a bit. “sure. Fantastic. Someone throw her a parade. In fact why don’t you add that to your list of date ideas? That ought to open up her pants.”

John laughs and bites into the cone happily. You roll your eyes and turn off your camera review, swinging the lens to him and snapping a photo.

He swears and tries to push you away. This is typical then. But really you are waiting for the inevitable. He will bring it up soon. He always does.

“Hey Dave?”

Oh, here it comes.

“Mm.”

“…Have you made any progress yet? With… you know.”

Ever since your hormone results have come back normal you have been going to a sex therapist, and your brother thinks it’s a great joke but really he’s the only one you don’t mind asking you about it or teasing you about it, because you know that he doesn’t think that you’re a freak. Why should he? He’s the one who gets off to puppets after all- a fact you omit from all of your sessions very consciously.

Anyway, this sex therapist? She’s trying to get you involved in sexual fantasies and its just not working. It doesn’t matter what you think about or how much you rub yourself you just can’t enjoy masturbating. Sure its okay but you are never in the mood for it and if it wasn’t for John constantly sending you text reminders with the light hearted :P emoticon you probably wouldn’t even remember to. It feels like homework, and that is tiresome.

“No.” you answer him flatly. “None. Why does it even matter? You know for someone who was so insistent you didn’t want to be seen as gay you sure do come across keen to give me a mind blowing awe inspiring orgasm.”

John sighs and shakes his head.

“It’s not gay if you aren’t into me stupid. One sided doesn’t count.”

“What, so you’re into me then?”

“No! That’s not what I meant.”

Yeah yeah. You sigh and set your camera on the table, a little bruised that he didn’t even hesitate to tell you he wasn’t in fact ‘into’ you at all. If only the girls who asked you out on occasion were like that. If only John would stop being so pushy. You know he’s only doing it with good intentions in his heart but still it feels pointless and annoying. You shake your head a bit and remove your shades, so as to convey the weight of what you are about to say. Your patience is tissue thin. You can’t do this any more.

“John,”

“What?”

“I don’t want to go to the therapist any more. I don’t want to change.”

He looks at you in shock, totally uncomprehending. It’s as though the words you have just said made no sense in that exact sentence, and he didn’t understand your meaning at all.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m okay with not wanting a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Or anything. Can’t you just…” you sigh and rub the bridge of your nose tiredly. You are exhausted. Always so exhausted…

“Can you just file it away in your head that I’m happy like this, and I don’t want to fix it because there’s nothing wrong with me this is just how I am. Au natural. 100% pure Strider through and through and mighty fine stock at that. If I got any more real you probably couldn’t handle me. You dig?”

You don’t think he digs at all, actually. He looks at you still shocked and you shrug.

“I don’t want to have sex.” You tell him simply, to tie the message up. “So just back off, okay?”

“But,” John tries again, the same old questions coming from his lips. “Don’t you just want to _try_? You might like it.”

“No.”

“Have you never met a single person you actually care about enough to want to… you know. Get with?”

“No.”

“Oh come on Dave.” He looks at you in a way you hate, as if you are lying to him and he thinks he knows it. “You can’t be serious. You have never had a little crush even? Someone who you want all to yourself to lavish attention on you and to know every single detail about? Not even a _tiny_ bit?”

“No.” you tell him firmly, folding your arms and sinking back into the sofa in a sulk. “I’m so done with this conversation John lets just let it die.”

“But-“

“ _No_. come on dude, it’s my birthday. Don’t make this into fucking world war three. Its none of your sticky business anyway so just fuck _off_.”

Well, that might have sounded a bit harsher than it meant to, but it works because John does back off.

You spend the remainder of your birthday party in awkward civility.

 

◊

 

Vriska dumps John and he takes it pretty hard. You thought it was no big deal but apparently it is, and apparently the reason she dumped him is not even a bit hilarious but actually you thought it was one of the most amusing things you had ever heard in your life.

Jade had heard from Karkat who had heard from Sollux who had heard from Aradia who had heard from Vriska herself that he was pretty much as dead as they get in bed, and when she brings it up John pretty much flips a shit.

Touchy much?

You almost choke on your sandwich.

He tells you about it in confidence later, how he panicked and couldn’t get it to work, and you tried to be sympathetic but mostly you are feeling unreasonably smug about the whole affair. Almost… triumphant.

You feel as though in the imaginary battles between you and Vriska, and you and the exponential growth of John’s interest in putting his dick in things, you have been victorious. But of course that’s ridiculous, because there never was a battle or anything of the sort. It was just you being silly and ‘immature’ but you know. As you pat John’s shoulder and tell him ‘bitches ain’t shit’ you actually have to refrain from informing him that he deserved it, and he shouldn’t have gotten involved in silliness such as dating.

He tried to explain the technicalities. The details of being a teenager in bed with another teenager, naked and horny and wow, you held up your hands then and suggested that he stop now if he wanted you to stick around.

It’s a bit weird.

No matter how many times you hear the facts, it still seems weird.

But even though John seems to like that weirdness you forgive him. You like John too much to say ‘I told you so’ but you think it pretty hard.

On another much more satisfying level, the thought does not escape you; you get to have John all to yourself, now.

 

◊

 

“Hey kid you got a ‘special’ buddy yet or what?”

Your bro grabs your ass when you’re in the kitchen fixing yourself a microwave dinner and you jump up ready to spar, but he laughs and backs off so you think he isn’t looking for a fight so much as an opportunity to tease.

“Yeah, John.”

“I mean _special_ as in touching privates not special needs.”

“Oh haha.” You return your attention to your food and listen to him chuckle as he shuffles around in the kitchen, preparing himself a coffee and heaping approximately half the bottle of granules into his mug in the process. Your brother’s coffee probably didn’t even need a cup to stand there, sturdy and strong and black as tar.

You think coffee tastes like shit, but whatever.

There is a moment of peace while you slam the meal into the microwave and thumb in the keys, and he stirs his drink so the spoon clinks on the edge of his cup. You have a moment to think, and it occurs to you that you have actually never told your brother upfront about your ‘situation’. You suppose he sort of just knows it already, without your having to say anything, because your bro understands stuff like that. It’s a much appreciated quality, but all the same. You feel like maybe it’s about times to say something…

“Hey bro?”

“Yo.”

“I uh… you know how I don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anything right?”

“How could I not man. All those condoms I got in the bathroom cabinet. Wasted.”

“Yeah, well. Whatever.” You focus your gaze on the digital numbers on the microwave, counting down one by one, and suck your teeth trying to think of a cool way to phrase this. It is harder to say out loud than it is to just think, even though its just your older sibling and he’s made it pretty clear in the past that you can tell him anything if you needed to. It wasn’t that you needed to, so much as it was that you wanted to. You respected the guy that much after all. Him and his wild ironic skills.

“Anyway. It’s… not that I couldn’t get one if I wanted to. Right?”

“Yeah I know that.”

“It’s just… I don’t want one?”

“Yeah no I figured.” He picked up his now full cup of coffee and took a deep swallow.

“… Yeah.” You bite your lip nervously. “Is that… okay with you?”

Bro shrugs and you watch his face carefully for any sign of disappointment, annoyance, or amusement. There is none. Just the same impassive detail behind his shades, his face handsome, sharp, and very young for a man in his later thirties. You look like your bro; no wonder you get so much attention from the ladies.

“Your life kid. You do whatever you wanna. Did you want a coffee?”

“No,” you tell him, turning to the microwave to hide the rush of relieved colour to your cheeks. Your chest feels like its filling swiftly with joy. You pop open the door three seconds before the alarm went off. Your meal is hot, and smells florid, but you pluck it out anyway and drop it onto the bench to search for a fork in the drawer. “Fuck no. coffee tastes like shit.”

“Now that is a life choice I don’t approve of you ungrateful little shit.”

You are glad you are facing away from him, so he can’t see your smile.

Your bro is the best bro. He gets you. And when he doesn’t, he doesn’t really care. You think that if your bro thinks you are alright, then there is actually absolutely nothing wrong.

 

◊

 

You had forgotten how much you loved spending time with John, and it is only now he has broken up with Vriska you notice this. You regret not making the most of it more before.

You like it when people see you with John; you feel as though he makes people look at you in envy, because he has actually chosen to spend time with you and that must give you worth that couldn’t be paid for. He’s a pretty great guy after all, and this vibe of nerdy coolness does kind of radiate off him brightly. Even though you have your own chill aura, it shines even brighter around John’s and the way he makes you laugh so easily behind a stone cold mask, and the way he is so genuinely excited about everything, is addictive and moreish and you think that John Egbert is your favourite person in the world.

Sometimes at night, when you are sitting on pesterchum and out of the blue he brings up the name of a girl he likes, or a celebrity he would like to take on a sexy date, you experience these horrible, gut wrenching moments where you know that you aren’t his.

But it passes.

 

◊

 

“Hey Dave.” John pops up at your locker and you cock an eyebrow at him, your arms full of textbooks and your sandwich clamped between your teeth, as you push the door shut with your shoulder and swing your satchel with practiced finesse onto your hip.

“Mmph.”

“Why thanks Dave, I am looking handsome today right?” he grinned, helping you open your bag and dump all your shit inside, so that you could take your sandwich out of your mouth and come back with a solid, soul crushing retort.

“You’re a fucking laugh a minute you are Egbert. Burned me real good. Better get me some cream to slather up the blisters from that fire.”

“Haha Dave.”

You head off and he falls into stride beside you down the hall, edging past throngs of people and groups of cheerleaders, noticing that over the past period, someone must have gone down the hall and pasted up the School Ball posters you had worked on in design class these last few weeks; Saturday the seventh, boasted the date. 9pm til midnight.

You think you did a bang up job on the project, a Mucha-esque experiment that had come out looking pretty damn good, although you were unhappy that your artistic integrity on the embellishments had to be compromised because apparently, putting metallic gold foil on every poster to accent was not only impractical but expensive. You had to settle for stupid mustard CMYK inks instead, but oh well. Life goes on.

“You did a good job on the posters dude.” John shares your sentiment, jamming his hands in his pockets and flicking his hair off his face in that way he does, and your heart wells at his compliment because somehow hearing it from him made it worth ten million times more than having your design chosen out of the twenty seven submitted by your classmates.

“Yeah it’s pretty cool.”

“You going?”

“Pft, no.” you almost laugh aloud. Why the hell would you? It wasn’t like you had a date or anything. “I’d make everyone on the dance floor look bad and I don’t think I could deal with that guilt is all.”

John laughed, and you fancied that you could hear an almost sad note in his tone.

“Yeah, ok. I probably won’t go either… no one would want to go with me.”

You thought that was a straight up lie, but it was comforting to know that John wouldn’t be going either.

You could spend the evening delightfully alone together, and that seemed like the best damn thing.

 

◊

 

Jade and Rose go to the dance and leave you and John to your own devices for the evening, and though John tells them that you will be chilling at his the whole night watching movies truth is he has just got his learners permit a couple of days before, and he’s going to take your bros ute down to the lake just out of town cause your bro is cool like that, and actually suggested the idea.

You can’t help but be extremely excited.

You know its really dumb, but you try on at least six different shirts before you finally decide on the long-sleeved-tee, and even then you feel a little self-conscious though your bro assures you impatiently that it does not look like ‘too much’ so shut the fuck up and leave already so he can masturbate.

Gross. Whatever.

You sit in the sofa, jiggling your knee impatiently, watching the clock mark time toward the moment that John was supposed to arrive. You go out with John all the time, and you don’t feel anything like this usually. You just feel… different today because the situation is admittedly a little different. For one, John’s driving and that’s significant. It’s like… you are both older now, and you have changed a lot since you were little. On top of that, the fact that you and he are together on this, the evening of a school dance when most people are together dating? Yeah, it’s just kind of exciting sort of. You feel flattered that he would have chosen to spend this time with you. Even though he spends a lot of time with you anyway. Eh…

You jump when his fist falls on the door, and fly to the door before in a brief moment remembering yourself and smoothing your hair shirt and shades before you yank open the door and greet him with an easy ‘sup’. John grins, a cute dimple appearing on his cheek. He didn’t used to have dimples. They just sort of evolved as his face changed and puberty brought handsome angles to his features.

“Hey Dave. You got the keys?”

“Yup. Bro said that we need to fill it up is all.”

“No problem,”

You pull the keys out of your back pocket and hand them to him, the most peculiar sensation of happiness tickling your fingertips where you brush his.

“So,” he asks, fiddling with the smuppet keyring and making the ring tinkle as you lock the flat door behind you. Your bro should be in his room watching porn by now and you don’t want a neighbour to stop by and receive an unwelcome surprise. “Where was it we said we would go?”

“The lake.”

“Oh you mean the one where the sexy teens were killed 100 years ago tonight?”

He winks at you cheekily, a joker through and through, when you glare at him in an effort to imply that such black humour comedy was not funny.

He made you watch Friday the 13th the other week. You would have verbally harassed him more about it but in the parts where it got a little to scary he let you hold his hand.

 

◊

 

The lake is placid and reflects the evening sky like a mirror; stripes of dark blue and pink bleed into each other over ripples in the water… you think it’s been a long time since you have seen something that made you so sorely wish you had brought your camera.

John parks by the pier, and the two of you fall out the car laughing about whatever you had been listening onto the radio. Or at least you think so. Mostly you were just laughing because of hysteria and silliness, but you are proud to say that this is hardly even obvious, you just pass it off as cool chuckling and pretend your face isn’t bright pink under your shades. The keys jingle as John jams them in his pocket again and your shoes crunch the gravel laid down by the council on the lake shore as you head down to the waters edge. It’s like a scene in a movie… the quintessential ‘evening after a first date’ scene that would usually end in some kissing and a slow passionate round of sex on the banks but you know, blessedly, that with John here that’s not going to happen. Instead, you will both just sit here together and work your way through the bag of shortbread biscuits and fourpack of readbull he had brought with. Maybe write some sloppy caffeine tinted songs to bellow ironically into the night, if the mood is right.

“Hey Dave?”

“Yo.” You bend down to grab a few rocks off the shoreline, flat ones that feel smooth and coin-like against your fingers, and load up your left hand with a likely candidate for your first attempt. “Wanna skipping contest?”

“Oh. Yeah.” John grabs his own rocks and biting back your smile you throw your first stone onto the surface of the lake. It skips four times then plonks into the water, spent.

“I was thinking.” John tosses his first one, and unsurprisingly it just falls exactly like, well, a stone. He was never very good at this activity. You laugh and fling another four-jumper a few metres further out than the last.

“Did it hurt dude? You want an asprin?”

“Haha. No, I’m being serious right now. Can’t you see I’m being serious?”

You shrug, and think that he does sound sorta serious. In an excitable, buck-toothed, John kind of way.

“Whatever.”

“Well, I was just thinking. You know. About stuff.” He hums happily, like a man with a jolly good trick up his sleeve, (a possibility. You’d seen John conjure roses from his sleeves before), and casts another stone. This time there is a moment where you _almost_ think it would work, so you inhale sharply in excitement for him and snap your head around. His eyes however take you by surprise. They are focused on you, and brimming with their usual light, but he looks at you in a way that suddenly makes you feel unlike anything you have ever felt, under John’s scrutiny.

“…What stuff?” you stumble. “Do you wanna go grab the food from the car and we can sit and start eating? If you’re gunna get all mushy on me dude I want to be sitting down when you do it.”

John immediately flushes.

“I’m not going to get mushy! I just… I just wanted to say I appreciate spending time with you!”

Oh, thank god. .

“I was just dicking you bro. Come on. Get the snacks. I’m going to do some more skipping practice.”

As you watch him drop his stones and jog back to the vehicle, you can’t stop your cheeks from feeling warm where his sight had touched you.

 

◊

 

“We graduate soon!” Jade announces one day, as the four of you sit in Rose’s lounge drinking tea and examining various college prospectuses. You and John share a pile, because of course you will be going to the same place, but Jade has a stack of foreign university info packs and Rose has long since decided that she will be going to New York, to live and study with her girlfriend; The same one she had been with for several years.

You are kind of envious of the consistency of their relationship. Having someone from outside your own home life become a staple part of your personal life is whimsical and magical an idea. It must be nice to have someone like you enough to want to do that…

“Here Dave,” John points at a college promo for some school in Utah. “We just have to convert to Mormonism and we are shoe ins!”

Oh. Of course. Sometimes you forget.

You give John a little eyebrow wiggle, as Rose and Jade busy themselves discussing the promises of impending graduation. They seem very excited, which you suppose is reasonable, but to be honest in some ways you don’t really want to graduate.

You feel as though you had a calm and boring adolescence, where your friends meanwhile experienced many ups and downs. Maybe it’s because you cared less about things than they did, you don’t know, but in a lot of ways you worry that your teenage years have slipped away from you without your even trying to hold onto them, and without your energy invested in making the most of the dizzying highs and the crippling lows. Being dumped maybe? Yeah, that was probably a low. One you certainly missed out on, and you feel an odd ghostly longing for, but all the same you can’t escape the patient march of time: You are still short in stature, but you are a man now. Girls don’t look at you as blatantly as they used to, because they assume at your age you are already in a long term relationship. People treat you properly in stores, because they trust you aren’t going to shoplift, or graffiti. You are still the exact same Dave, but now you have to be an adult and grapple with responsibilities and you aren’t sure you are ready to do that.

But in other ways, you feel as though you have been awaiting this moment all your life.

Finally, a flat to call your own. You can cook what you want, sleep when you want, watch what you want. You can go down to the supermarket and buy ten litres of apple juice and drink it all, and no one will be there to stop you or to threaten to call the fucking cops or the ambulance or  something cause ‘ain’t nobody needs that much apple juice in one go’. After nineteen years, you don’t have to explain to anyone in school that you don’t want to date them ‘because’, or justify yourself to a youth counsellor who thinks they know everything about everything and just wants to get you laid. Maybe you are ready for this after all. Maybe you are actually really fucking pumped.

And you know what? Now you have John back.

John hasn’t talked about girls for a long time. Not since before the night of the ball. You dunno if it’s because he’s lost interest, if other more important things have come to the forefront of his mind, or because he’s suppressing his interest for your benefit, but either way you really fucking appreciate it on account of his being so much _cooler_ when he’s like this. The two of you talk about movies, and music, and games, and your futures, and he explains to you the basics of his planned bio-engineering degree while you try and entertain ideas of archaeology or fine arts. It’s a big decision to make, between two very different courses. He doesn’t try and tell you that it’s ‘gay’ for you to touch him unnecessarily, and he seems to have become accustomed to touching you in return. You think you like this most of all.

You hear Rose falter in her speech when, after noticing a fallen eyelash clinging to John’s cheek, you brush it away without batting an eyelid. He doesn’t mind even a little.

You’ve known John Egbert since you were just a child. He’s always been the centre of your universe. And when he looks up and grins at you, and between you there is something shared and secret and unspoken that no-one else could ever hope to understand, you think that in that moment, despite sex, and girls, and differences, you are the centre of his as well.

 

◊

 

_These days, any individual is at liberty to walk wherever the fuck they want._

_And so it is, they should be._


End file.
